The Effect of Health on Income: Quasi-Experimental Evidence from Commuting Accidents

This paper interprets accidents occurring on the way to and from work as negative health shocks to identify the causal effect of health on labor market outcomes. We argue that in our sample of exactly matched treated and control workers, these health shocks are quasi-randomly assigned. A fixed-effects difference-in-differences approach estimates a negative and persistent effect on subsequent employment and income. After initial periods with a higher incidence of sick leave, treated workers are more likely unemployed, and a growing share of them leaves the labor market via disability retirement. Those treated workers, who manage to stay in employment, incur persistent income losses. The effects are stronger for sub-groups of workers who are typically less attached to the labor market.Health, employment, income

The Effect of Health on Income: Quasi-Experimental Evidence from Commuting Accidents

This paper interprets accidents occurring on the way to and from work as negative health shocks to identify the causal effect of health on labor market outcomes. We argue that in our sample of exactly matched treated and control workers, these health shocks are quasi-randomly assigned. A fixed-effects difference-in-differences approach estimates a negative and persistent effect on subsequent employment and income. After initial periods with a higher incidence of sick leave, treated workers are more likely unemployed, and a growing share of them leaves the labor market via disability retirement. Those treated workers, who manage to stay in employment, incur persistent income losses. The effects are stronger for sub-groups of workers who are typically less attached to the labor market.Health, employment, income

Measuring the Financial Markets' Perception of EMU Enlargement: The Role of Ambiguity Aversion

Market views on EMU enlargement are measured by a new indicator based on the short-term dynamics of forward spreads. Conceptually, this indicator stems from the notion of uncertainty averse agents and equilibrium indeterminacy. The method was applied on data from central European countries, including the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland and Slovakia. Comparing our results with financial market opinion surveys, the results of the proposed method seems to be in accordance with market expectations.Ambiguity aversion, EMU calculators, EMU Enlargement, EMU Poll, forwards,uncertainty.

New Tasks in Old Jobs: Drivers of Change and Implications for Job Quality

This overview report summarises the findings of 20 case studies looking at recent changes in the task content of five manufacturing occupations (car assemblers, meat processing workers, hand-packers, chemical products plant and machine operators and inspection engineers) as a result of factors such as digital transformations, globalisation and offshoring, increasing demand for high quality standards and sustainability. It also discusses some implications in terms of job quality and working life. The study reveals that the importance of physical tasks in manufacturing is generally declining due to automation; that more intensive use of digitally controlled equipment, together with increasing importance of quality standards, involve instead a growing amount of intellectual tasks for manual industrial workers; and that the amount of routine task content is still high in the four manual occupations studied. Overall, the report highlights how qualitative contextual information can complement existing quantitative data, offering a richer understanding of changes in the content and nature of jobs

The Outlook for Credit in the Irish Economy

This note presents estimates of the likely credit requirements of different sectors of the economy over a short-term horizon to 2013. The measure of credit “demand” used in the analysis is the stock of outstanding loans to the Irish private sector from the resident banking sector. The results indicate a substantial fall in the amount of loans outstanding by 2013, the bulk of which is contained within Property (construction and real estate) and Personal Mortgage lending. Despite the projected fall in the amount of outstanding credit allocated to Mortgage lending, as a sector it is expected to continue to account for the majority of outstanding loans to the Irish private sector.

Protein Tyrosine Phosphatase 1B (PTP1B) in the immune system

Journal not available online when checked 02/04/19. DOI: 10.14800/ics.965Peer reviewedPublisher PD

Parental response to early human capital shocks: Evidence from the Chernobyl accident

Little is known about the response behavior of parents whose children are exposed to an early-life shock. We interpret the prenatal exposure of the Austrian 1986 cohort to radioactive fallout from the Chernobyl accident as a negative human capital shock and examine their parents' response behavior. To identify causal effects, we can rely on exogenous variation in the exposure to radioactive fallout (over time and) between communities due to geographic differences in precipitation at the time of the accident. Our design-based approach (which accounts for culling effects) provides robust empirical evidence for compensating investment behavior. Families with low socioeconomic status reduce their family size, while families with higher status respond with reduced maternal labor supply. Our results urge caution in the interpretation of estimates of the long-term effects of early-life shocks on children. These estimates should only be interpreted as reduced-form estimates, and one has to account for parental response behavior to reach a deeper understanding on the relationship between early-life shocks and the formation of human capital. In the case of our application, we can interpret the estimates as the lower bound of the biological effect. For exposed children from higher socioeconomic backgrounds, there are no detrimental effects discernable. In contrast, exposed children from lower socioeconomic backgrounds have significantly worse human capital outcomes as young adults. This suggests that compensating investment by parents with higher socioeconomic status is relatively more effective

Parental Response to Early Human Capital Shocks: Evidence from the Chernobyl Accident

Little is known about the response behavior of parents whose children are exposed to an early-life shock. In this paper we interpret the prenatal exposure of the Austrian 1986 cohort to radioactive fallout from the Chernobyl accident as a negative human capital shock and examine their parents' response behavior. To identify causal effects we can rely on exogenous variation in the exposure to radioactive fallout (over time and) between communities due to geographic differences in precipitation at the time of the accident. We find robust empirical evidence of compensating investment behavior by parents in response to the shock. Families with low socioeconomic status reduced their family size, while families with higher socioeconomic status responded with reduced maternal labor supply. Compensating investment made by the latter group seems relatively more effective because we do not find any detrimental long-term effects for exposed children from higher socioeconomic backgrounds. In contrast, exposed children from low socioeconomic backgrounds have significantly worse labor market outcomes as young adults